


A Sham Romance

by Ladybug_21



Category: London Spy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Backstory, Cambridge, Canon Compliant, Closeted Character, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Other, Platonic Female/Male Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25093828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: Claire always knew that Scottie would never love her the way that most women want to be loved. But for her, the love that he could offer was more than enough.
Relationships: Claire (London Spy) & Danny Holt, Claire (London Spy) & Scottie (London Spy), Danny Holt/Alex Turner
Kudos: 1





	A Sham Romance

**Author's Note:**

> So I binge-watched this entire show over the course of six hours this past weekend, and oh my GOD, every time Jim Broadbent appeared onscreen, I wanted to give him the biggest hug. And I came out of everything wanting more about Scottie and Claire and their adorable platonic romance that seemed to still have a lot of underlying angst. I obviously own no rights to _London Spy_.

_"You haven't lost your taste for theatricality."_

_"For once, it's justified."_

* * *

Claire might never have met Scottie if he hadn't had a flair for the dramatic. She was naturally shy—slow to get to know people, but forever loyal once attached. She spent most of her first few months at Cambridge quietly studying, or at the pub listening to conversation between her roommate Emily and Emily's friends. Claire herself never said much during these evenings out, but she smiled as she listened. She didn't need to be the centre of attention to be perfectly content with things.

Scottie, on the other hand, arrived at uni with an oversized personality that spilled from his studies of politics into his extracurricular life. Not content to limit his attention to the classroom, he quickly involved himself in the Pembroke Players. The first time Claire set eyes on him, he was playing Iago in Blinco Grove, the slightest of sneers curling the corner of his mouth, his gaze dangerously inscrutable. Claire couldn't take her eyes off of him. Emily's then-boyfriend Theo did a perfectly respectable job as Cassio, and this fortunately meant that Emily and Claire had every right to press their way backstage after the play was over.

"I'm sorry," stammered Claire as someone walked into her, and she was mortified when she saw that it was Iago, looking just as handsome but considerably less menacing out of costume.

"Not at all! The apologies should all be mine," said the thespian. He swept into a low bow, then seized Claire's hand and kissed it gallantly. Claire's heart was hammering by the time the boy winked and, with a final gentle pat, released her hand.

"Was Scottie bothering you?" Emily asked, returning to her stunned roommate's side. "Don't mind him, he's all drama, all the time."

"No," said Claire. "No, he wasn't bothering me at all."

Emily raised her eyebrows at Claire.

"Claire dear, don't tell me you fancy him a bit!" she laughed. "I mean, I can see why—Theo says the Players haven't seen so talented an actor for years. Bloody charismatic, he is. But you shouldn't get your hopes up."

"Oh, no," blushed Claire, "I mean, I don't think that someone like me could..."

"No no no!" Emily corrected herself quickly. "It's nothing to do with _you_ , Claire! It's just... well, Theo says there are rumours about him. Being... you know." She dropped her voice down to a stage whisper. "A bit queer."

Claire's eyes widened, and she nodded. She knew what it could mean for the actor's entire career at Cambridge, if it were true.

A few days later, Claire was walking along the Cam, thinking, when she saw someone waving at her from a few yards away. To her bewilderment, it was Iago.

"I thought I'd make my location clear, before I ran straight into you again," he explained cheerfully as she approached. "Scottie. We met at the play?"

"I know," replied Claire, a bit breathlessly. "I mean, yes, of course I remember. You were brilliant, I meant to say so at the time."

"Ah, but it's always difficult to remember one's intentions when knocked over by an impulsive young actor." Scottie winked at her again. "And, since my manners at the time were also delayed, might I ask your name now?"

"Claire," she replied.

"Claire," he repeated, and he stopped to contemplate the word's virtues. "French for 'clear', implying light and candour. Lovely."

"Thank you," blushed Claire, looking down at her feet.

"Care to sit down, by the way?" Scottie gestured to the grass next to them. "If you're not in a rush."

Claire wished she weren't, but she did need to get back to Newnham, and she said as much.

"Ah, well then!" answered Scottie. "I don't know if you'd like company on your way back, but..."

"Yes," Claire smiled. "Let's walk."

Their walks became regular occurrences. Scottie could dissect the latest in Soviet politics as fluidly as he could analyse an Elizabethan sonnet; he was devilishly witty and peppered even the most serious reflections on mortality with quips that made Claire laugh. To her surprise and delight, she somehow made Scottie laugh, as well, even though she had never counted herself a particularly entertaining person. And he unfailingly asked about her own work—how her latest lab results were coming along, whether she was already well on her way to curing the virus for the common cold for good—and listened to her quiet but enthusiastic explanations with avid interest.

"What do you want to do with your life?" Claire asked him one afternoon as they meandered along the banks of the Cam, watching the swans glide by with seeming effortlessness. "You could do so many things, Scottie. I've never met anyone with so many doors open before him."

Scottie furrowed his brow pensively.

"Well, my heart is really in the theatre, but I think my parents might well disown me, if I went that route," he said with a sad chuckle. "No, I think the political route is the safer bet. There are things I'd... love to do to change the world, really."

"Scottie for Prime Minister?" Claire teased him, thinking that he certainly had the charisma for it.

"If only, my dear," sighed Scottie.

"Well, why not?" Claire asked. The world was Scottie's oyster; why couldn't he see that as clearly as she could?

Scottie didn't reply for a long time. He stared out over the river, his eyes following the swans without really seeing them.

"There are certain scripts they hand you, Claire," he said at last, staring out over the Cam. "If you want to be cast as Prime Minister, they give you a certain script for that, tell you how you need to go about making friends and conducting yourself in public, expect you to learn the part and learn it damn well. I love _studying_ these sorts of things, of course—I wouldn't spend half my time faffing about with the Players, if I didn't! But there comes a point when you have to ask how much of yourself you want to cede to the role you've chosen. If there's something that you desperately want to say or do, and yet it's not in the script, is it worth saying or doing it anyway, and risk losing the role altogether?"

Claire gently placed her hand on his arm, and Scottie turned and took her hands tenderly.

"Can I ask you something?" she said quietly. "And will you answer me honestly, if I do?"

"Of course," said Scottie sincerely. "I trust very few people in this world as much as I trust you, Claire. There can be no secrets between us."

Claire nodded.

"I think you care for me, Scottie," she began.

"I think that's quite an understatement," scoffed Scottie with a grin.

"And I might even be so bold as to say that I think you love me," Claire managed after a moment of indecision.

"Very much," smiled Scottie fondly.

"But do you _want_ me, Scottie?" Claire pressed. "You don't have to say that you do, and you don't have to say anything about it, if you don't. It's just... I need to know."

Scottie's hands still held Claire's so gently, and his face was wracked with sorrow.

"Claire," he said softly, and then his voice caught. "No. I don't, my dear. I'm so sorry. I wish it were otherwise."

"Don't be sorry." Claire's smile was sad, but at least she now had as certifiable fact what she had always known without proof. "I wouldn't have asked you to be honest, if I didn't want to know."

Scottie raised her hands to his lips and kissed them.

"If ever—" He paused, before continuing, "Well, I'm sure you've heard the rumours. What they say about me. I have no doubt you've had your own suspicions for some time now. So I suppose it won't shock you if I say it aloud, that if ever I _were_ to desire a woman, Claire, it would be you. If I were other than what I am, I daresay I would have proposed to you, by now."

Claire let out a bittersweet little laugh, and Scottie enfolded her in his arms. From the way her ear was pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beating steadily.

"How many people know?" she asked.

"For certain? Only the two people standing on this exact patch of earth," Scottie told her. "Let's hope things stay that way."

Claire watched the water ripple across the surface of the river, and she heard the wind rustle the leaves of the trees on the opposite bank, and she listened to Scottie's heart pulse, as if his body had become a part of hers.

"We could pretend," she offered in a small voice. "To dispel any rumours. It would only have to be for a few months. And no one but us would have to know that the romance wasn't real."

Scottie kissed her forehead, sniffing back tears.

"It would be real," he said quietly. "Just a different type of real from what they'd imagine. After all, the most foolproof deceptions are the ones that are only the slightest degree off from the truth."

* * *

_"It was supposed to last about two months or so."_

_"It lasted two years."_

* * *

The first year was easy. Everyone knew how close Claire and Scottie already were, so when they began walking around arm in arm, the whispers flared excitedly but were short-lived. The two friends went on long bike rides around town on the weekends, took tea together, sat on the lawns and read books side by side in the spring sunshine, had picnics in the Scholars' Garden.

"Well!" exclaimed Emily, her eyes dancing. "I guess we were all wrong about Scottie, weren't we? And I'm so glad that we were, Claire. It's wonderful seeing you so in love."

And Claire blushed and smiled, without any pretence needed.

They found a flat together at the start of the next term, on the Newnham side of the Cam, but still an easy walk to Pembroke. Claire was grateful that Scottie didn't mind getting the slightly shorter end of the stick. "I rather like a bit of a brisk walk in the morning, don't you?" her new flatmate grinned. In the evenings, they cooked dinner together, danced in their kitchen to whatever was on the radio, fell asleep watching telly on the sofa with their heads on each other's shoulders, did the Sunday crossword together over breakfast like an old couple.

Claire had never been happier in her life.

"Would it be odd," Scottie asked one evening, uncharacteristically hesitant. "You can tell me if you don't want to, but would you feel comfortable if we tried kissing in public sometime? It doesn't have to be anything elaborate."

Claire patted the space next to her on the sofa, and Scottie sat anxiously. She slowly leaned forward and kissed him, genuinely but chastely, on the mouth.

"Something like that?" she said.

Scottie nodded, and then pulled her into a hug.

"What would I do without you, Claire?" he whispered. "Do you resent all of this? Would you rather be out there, on the arm of some man who could appreciate you the way you deserve?"

" _You_ appreciate me the way I deserve," Claire told him fiercely.

Because it was true. There were dozens of young men out there in the quads of Cambridge who, Claire was quite sure, would be more than happy to sleep with her. But she couldn't imagine that any of them would make her half as happy as Scottie did. The fact that she and Scottie had never had sex, and never would, was entirely besides the point. They nonetheless shared a sort of intimacy that Claire cherished beyond any physical gratification that she could imagine.

But Scottie had written his own script of sorts for Claire, and his fears and insecurities began working their way into conversation, despite all of her reassurances that she was as happy as could be. Claire didn't realise how serious his guilt was until she got home one evening and found Scottie lying on the floor, surrounded by his own sick, too drunk to even sit up.

"Oh, god, Scottie!" she cried, kneeling down and cradling his head and shoulders in her lap.

"Claire, why're you here?" he muttered at her. "You should leave."

"Don't be ridiculous," she sobbed. "I'm calling for help, and I'm staying right here until it arrives."

"That's not..." Scottie clumsily seized her sleeve. "You should leave. You're wasting your life with me, Claire. You deserve better."

"I've already told you, I don't _want_ anyone else..."

" _Yet, for necessity of present life, / I must show out a flag and sign of love, / Which is indeed but sign_ ," Scottie interrupted, and then he began to cry. "Isn't that all this is, Claire? Naught but sign, this sham romance of ours?"

"It's my choice," whispered Claire, shaking with rage and fear and despair. "It's my choice to love you, Scottie. Don't you _dare_ try to take that away from me."

She called an ambulance and sat up in the hospital waiting room all night long. The doctors finally let her into the room in the early hours of the dawn, once Scottie was finally out of danger and somewhat lucid again. He smiled blearily at her from the hospital bed as she slipped into the room, the dawn weakly falling across his bedspread.

"You're still here," he whispered. "Even after everything I said."

"Please," she said, her voice haggard. "Please never do anything like that again, Scottie."

She took his hand, and he turned his face away, ashamed.

"I've been praying," he rasped. "Praying, hoping, wishing that I could want you the way you deserve. Praying to be the person everyone else thinks I am."

"No." Claire's eyes were filled with tears as she squeezed Scottie's hand. "I love you for exactly who you are, Scottie. Not for who I wish you could be. I wish you could understand that I wouldn't trade what we have for the world."

Scottie smiled wanly at her, and she kissed his hand.

"Get some rest," she told him. "I need your help back home, figuring out the last few words in the crossword. You know you can't let me down, on that count."

* * *

_"It won't work. Whatever you do, whatever you try, it won't work."_

* * *

The arrangement was up when they graduated from Cambridge. They discussed continuing, but once Scottie was recruited, he refused to pull Claire into the shadowy world of British intelligence after him.

"I'm not supposed to discuss it with anyone," he told her. "Only the closest members of my family are even allowed to know that I'm going to go work for them!"

"Have you even told your parents yet?" Claire asked; and when Scottie shook his head, she sighed exasperatedly, "Well, then, why on earth are you telling _me_?!"

Scottie furrowed his brow, as if this should have been obvious.

Their paths diverged as Scottie began training that he couldn't discuss with Claire, as he disappeared for months at a time to undisclosed locations, no communications whatsoever permitted. She dove into her own research to fill the void, learned to live with the periods of uncertainty. And at least they made her all the more grateful when Scottie would spontaneously ring her doorbell.

"I know you can't discuss it," she asked one evening, "but can you at least tell me if you're happy?"

"I am." Scottie grinned, and for a moment, he was the flamboyant actor flagging her down on the edge of the Cam. "Without saying anything more, it's everything I could have wanted. The perfect marriage of theatrics and Soviets."

And Claire had laughed at her delightful old friend.

She didn't laugh, however, when he appeared on her doorstep three years later, dazed.

"They know," he said numbly, sitting on her sofa. "My mistake, of course. Someone threatened to blackmail me, so I went and told them outright. I'm being transferred. Ministry for Transport. Pen-pushing in Whitehall for the next thirty years. It's about the best I could have hoped for."

Claire put a hand on Scottie's arm, her heart breaking for him. She knew how much Scottie loved his work. She knew how miserable he was set to be, for the rest of his career, when he was the man who could have had it all.

"I thought about killing myself last night," Scottie continued. "Bought a sturdy rope and found a suitable tree and everything. But then I thought about how incredibly disappointed you'd be, to know that I'd died so ashamed of who I was. That's the thing about you, Claire—you've always accepted me, always been proud of me, even when I haven't found the resolve myself. So I decided to choose another way."

Claire wrapped her arms around him, her tear-stained cheek pressed to his. She held him all night long, even after he'd dozed off into fitful dreams.

She could tell that he started drinking heavily after that. She tried to discuss it with him once, but Scottie lashed out at her, and then withdrew, unwilling to accept her help, no matter how hard she tried to reach him. And so Claire, wounded, retreated back into her own life of microscopes and pipettes and grant proposals, trying to distract herself. She dated other men, but inevitably went home wishing that she could relate the events of these evenings to Scottie and make him laugh. The years slipped by, and Claire, to her surprise, found herself rising in her own department, and suddenly at the helm of an entire university. She still had never married, had never had children, as Scottie no doubt had always wished she would. Well, now she was tasked with the well-being of hundreds and hundreds of bright students whose potential seemed to practically radiate from them. For Claire, that somehow more than made up for things.

And this was especially true when Claire was suddenly given the care of a student who was far younger and yet far older than most of the young adults around him. Alistair Turner was a startling fifteen year old with the intensity and solemnity of a full-grown man. He didn't intimidate Claire the way his mother did, but Claire didn't quite know what to make of a young person so polished and accomplished and singular and _alone_. One glance at him told her that he was a child who had never been given the luxury of a childhood. But Mrs Turner made perfectly clear that her son was at the University of London to _learn_ , not to socialise, and Claire implicitly understood that it was not her place to say otherwise.

"I hope you know," she told the boy at the end of her first meeting with him and his mother, "that you can always come to me with any problems, however insignificant." (Claire knew that Marcus Shaw, although incredibly brilliant, was not cut out to be a personal mentor for his students.)

Alistair Turner nodded, almost surprised. He never did take Claire up on her offer—largely, it seemed, because the boy kept to himself and rarely interacted with his peers, and so the bulk of his problems were mathematical rather than personal. But he always smiled at Claire when they passed in the hallways. Claire knew it wasn't her job to understand the equations that he and Marcus scribbled across whiteboards, but as long as Alistair Turner continued to grant her these small smiles, then she felt that she was doing what she could for him.

It was around this time that Scottie finally re-emerged, tentatively and apologetically.

"I'm surprised you were willing to meet with me again," he told her as they walked along the Victoria Embankment after dinner. "I've been a truly awful friend to you, these past few years. I'm coping with everything now. The depression, the alcoholism. Funnily enough, I think I was too embarrassed to face you again, until I had things under control."

Scottie's previous confidence had been weathered by the injustice of the world. His hands were shoved into his coat pockets as they trudged along.

"I wouldn't have judged you," she promised him.

"I know, Claire," said Scottie with a weary laugh. "But I've been enough of a burden to you, already. I couldn't saddle you with all of this, as well."

Times had changed. There was no need for pretence in today's world. Scottie was free to be who he was, out in the open, without fear of sanction or retribution. But old habits died hard. Claire slipped her arm into his and was comforted to find that they still fit together as seamlessly as they always had.

"I've missed you," she told him.

Scottie stopped and turned to her. He kissed her gently on the forehead.

"And I, you." He smiled. "I suppose it's beneath the dignity of a university president and provost to picnic in gardens with stodgy old friends. But I can't say how happy I am to be here with you, once more walking by the water and talking of the world. I'm not sure I ever told you that those were some of the happiest years of my entire life."

And Claire leaned her head against his shoulder as they continued along the lamplit Embankment in the faded light of the evening.

* * *

_"I'll be here, when you're ready."_

* * *

Danny Holt, through some combination of intuition and the events of the past weeks, had thankfully gotten very good at deciphering the truth from the dross.

Claire had felt guilty about delivering the monologue that she had, for the benefit of the hidden microphones scattered throughout her office. She couldn't help but worry about Danny and the fact that he might take more truth away from her harsh words than she had intended. _You're confused_ , she had told Danny, and she hated herself because she knew that it was somewhat true. Danny Holt was the type of young man whose first true certainty and anchor in life had been his love for Alex Turner, and Claire didn't doubt in the slightest the conviction with which Danny would pursue the truth of Alex's death to the bitter end. But she could feel the confusion that surrounded every other part of his life, could read it in Danny's face just as easily as in his written musings and scraps of poetry.

Claire hadn't known how much to hope that Danny would ever return, and her heart lifted when he did—exhausted and as sombre as always, but present. She rose from her desk as he entered.

"You look like you could use something caffeinated to wake you up," she insisted. "Let's walk."

She bought Danny a coffee and followed him all the way to the Regent's Park, where there were fewer places to hide cameras and microphones. Claire hadn't seen Frances Turner in well over a decade, but one didn't really forget people like Frances Turner, and by this point in the entire messy saga of Alex's murder, Claire somehow was not surprised to find her here, moodily smoking a cigarette on a park bench and looking just as in need of caffeine as Danny. It all felt like something straight out of a Cold War espionage thriller, and Claire nearly laughed. Scottie would have loved the completely clichéd theatricality of it all.

"She's ready to join us," Danny muttered, jerking his head at Frances. "Can you get Marcus to help?"

"What's your plan?" Claire asked. She hoped that Danny's convictions had finally caught up with his ambitions, that he was no longer confused.

"We recreate the technology," Danny said in a very low voice. "If we can demonstrate to the public that it exists, show that it's real and dangerous enough to kill for, then they won't be able to deny that they killed Alex."

"Danny, Alex's work is _gone_ ," Claire reminded him. "I destroyed my copy. Marcus destroyed his. The university's records of Alex have been deleted—not by us, but I checked, and it's happened. And now you say that the posted copies have been tampered with, the flashdrive has been wiped, and Alex's own mother burned the last printed copy you have? Marcus is brilliant, Danny, but he's not Alex. He can't recreate this without Alex's mind there to help him."

"I know," said Danny calmly. "That's why we need him to work with the person who taught Alex how to think."

Claire, who really didn't know Frances Turner at all but had always intensely disliked her anyway, glanced in her direction and scowled.

"Parental intuition isn't enough, Danny."

"It's not," Danny agreed. "But she didn't teach Alex how to think like a person. She taught him how to think like a _mathematician_. She made him into the perfect human computer. The perfect intelligence analyst. The perfect spy."

Well. This certainly explained a lot. Although it was somewhat amazing, Claire reflected, how someone like _that_ should look so similar on paper to her vibrant, gregarious, loving Scottie. Clearly—and perhaps unsurprisingly—Cambridge-trained spies came in many shapes and forms.

"And she's seen them use it, Claire," Danny added softly. "She watched them. She watched them use Alex's own technology to kill him. If anyone is going to fight to the death to get the truth out, it'll be her."

Claire sighed softly.

"Danny, I told you that Scottie sent me a letter with your notebook?"

Danny nodded moodily and scuffed the gravel pathway with the sole of his trainer.

"I didn't mention that he also begged me to keep you safe," Claire said. "You know how much he loved you. How can I betray him, by helping you rush straight into even greater danger?"

"Aren't there some truths that are more important than safety?" Danny argued. "Scottie _knew_ that. He wouldn't have helped me, otherwise."

Claire nodded slowly. Maybe she was about to do something completely mad for Scottie's sake, even after his death. But she had seen how lies had destroyed years of Scottie's life, from the inside out, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much he loved her. A private truth, shared and understood and acknowledged between the closest of friends and carefully chosen confidantes, had not been enough for Scottie. And, looking at Danny Holt, Claire recognised that it would never be enough for him, either.

"I'll talk to Marcus," she promised.

"Thank you, Claire." An exhausted grin spread across Danny's boyish face.

Claire smiled, and then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around this slight, tousle-headed young man, who had been so cherished by the only man Claire had ever loved.

"Maybe I was doing this for Scottie before," she told Danny, stepping back. "But I want you to know that now, I'm doing it for you, too. I'll be in touch."

Danny nodded and waved slightly as Claire turned and headed back down the gravel path towards her university. And maybe she really was losing her grip on whatever counted for reality these days, but as she made her solitary way back into Bloomsbury, Claire could have sworn that she felt the reassuring support of Scottie's arm slipped under her own.


End file.
